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I am starting an Imperial Guard army and am not sure how to build a list and what models to use.

I would appreciate any advice on tactics or good uints that you can give.

Thank you.

Choose either foot horde (commissars, special or power weapons, and lots of bodies) or mechanized (veteran squads in either valkyries or chimeras), and then, depending on how you built your army's core, you can then throw in a few artillery piece or tanks or something, if you like.

Welcome to the guard.

As Ailaros said.
Welcome to the first and last line of defence of mankind

Thanks

Hope I am not thread jacking here.... But I have had much the same questions as RaptorsTallon. I have purchased about 50 storm troopers, and managed to make 6 mortar stands, 3 auto cannons, and 3 las cannons, all of my storm trooper squads us flamers. I plan to equip my command squads with melta's and plasma. Though I have one that is all flamers. Working with bits and trying to spend as little money as possible. Also I have two russ's, a demolisher, and a normal russ. Plus a chimera. Am wanting to expand to make a full 1850pt army. But dont want to waste my money on stuff I dont really need. From what Ailaros has said, it seems as though I am going in a horde direction. But I am looking for advice on which direction to go next. I hope this can help me out a bit as well as RaptosTallon.

My suggestion is to proxy some games after you buy the codex to figure out what you like to play. Then go nuts!

Also, look at the army lists section to pick up some examples of good lists, and list-building fundamentals (have killing power to cover all target types, focus your list on to only a couple of unit types, have mobility, etc.).

Once you have some idea of what comprises a good guard list, make one of your own and post it so that people can help you hone its killing edge.

After you have a good list, it's a matter of execution on the field. This one is tough to give advice on without actually seeing your movement, deployment, etc. so detailed battle reports with pictures will get you the best advice about your field game.

Three types of guard armies I typically see:

Mechvets (Chimeras, Veterans, Medusas, manticores)

Foot Horde (lots of guardsmen, commisars, straken, autocannons)

Hybrid (a mix of both)

Here are some good units guard have:

Veterans (3 meltas at BS 4 and a heavy weapon for flexibility)

Medusas ( S10 5 inch blast or S10 AP 1 small blast but 2d6 armor pen)

Manticores ( D3 S10 AP 4 5 inch blasts)

Autocannon heavy weapon teams (for dakka)

Company Command Squad (flexibility of officers)

Infantry platoons (big blobs with commissars to make use of orders and tarpitting)

Banewolfs (Poison +2 and Heavyflamer hurts)

You have the codex, right? Sorry, I know that's a very standard response, but I wanna make sure.

ZacktheChaosChild wrote:You have the codex, right? Sorry, I know that's a very standard response, but I wanna make sure.

Yep, Ive got the codex....

Read this Polonius' IG Codex review: http://www.dakkadakka.com/wiki/en/Category:Imperial_Guard_Tactica

It helped me the most when I was starting my IG. Then i would suggest drafting up a list or two and posting them on the sub-forum for critique. Be sure to mention what type of games you are playing (casual, semi-competitive or competitive), as well as points level, army theme and whether you are restricted by the models you already own.

Truthfully there's very few units in the IG codex that are truly 'bad', its the list-building part that catches a lot of people out.

L. Wrex

First, as Lycaeus Wrex said, read Polonius' article. It's pretty decent, and helped me a little.

Second, read a lot of the posts in the army list forums, to get an idea of what advice is usually given. I hung out there for a while, benefiting from other folks' questions and lists.

Third, as Ailarios said, decide what you want the main theme of your army to be, or at least how you'd like it to play out on the field. Agressive, defensive, mech, foot, airborne, things like that. Basically you want to pick one, and make it a main theme with around 2/3rds of the army's points dedicated to it. Then the rest can either be random support, or a secondary theme.

And my biggest bit of advice is to lay off the upgrades. The IG codex is hugely efficient when you take a unit and give it weapons and little to nothing else. All of the shiny bits can add a little funtionality here and there, but most of the time points are best spend on weapons and units. I always build my lists with minimalist units. For example, my Vets only have three special weapons, and maybe a Chimera. I don't add anything to them until I've got a few points at the end of my list. Same goes for every unit I have. I determine the minimum amount of gear I'd be willing to field a unit with, and only give them that until the very end of a list. This usually leads to a more efficient, focused list with more units that pack a harder punch per point.

Lycaeus Wrex wrote:Read this Polonius' IG Codex review: http://www.dakkadakka.com/wiki/en/Category:Imperial_Guard_Tactica

Thanks for the link. It was a real help.

ElCheezus hit it right on the head. Go light on the upgrades, a Guardsman is a Guadsman, and no matter what fancy armor you buy him he will die sooner or later. However, don't go so light that all you have is lasguns. Buy some weapons to give your units hitting power, but lay off it there. For infantry blobs this means power weapons and Commissars. For MechVet and Air Cav this means special weapons.

BUt always focus on brigning enough to the table in one or two categories that you completely overwhelm the enemy in those categories.

You'll find that more bodies is sometimes better than well equipped bodies.